Humanoid

But what you're truly missing is the ability to throw water bottles across the dressing room.

Clearly it was the BLAND corporation this time.

Ultima 8: The Lost Vale

So there's been an unfortunate snafu with the first major patch being issued, withdrawn, and then reissued, causing a fair few installation problems for some people - myself included. In the end Galaxy's handling of it was rather suboptimal to say the least: it ended up downloading more data to finally fix the installation than it would have just reinstalling the game from scratch. Something in the order of 100GB. Normally that wouldn't be an issue for me, but this month it ended up blowing up my download limit and I've been reliant on phone tethering all weekend as a result. Ugh. On the plus side, it was the final push I needed to switch my ISP this month. I was going to do so next month anyway as my current one is going to push through an extortionate $25/mo price hike for the same service after my next billing cycle, so I've just shifted the move up one month.

The G700 is probably the worst mouse I've ever bought. It was on a fairly steep discount to be fair, and I was still playing MMOs at the time so the extra buttons had some appeal. Unfortunately the battery life was measured in days at best, compared to months (or even a year) for my previous MX1100 or at least weeks for my current MX Master. Probably something to do with an increase in polling rate because of the "gaming" factor, but I've never cared about that. Nowadays the extra buttons just get in the way, and the shape, while similar to most other Logitech premium mice, is marginally less comfortable than I'd like. I think the bottom end is maybe just a bit too bulbous, same as how I feel about PS4 controllers come to think of it. I quite like trackballs too, I use them with laptops whether it be at work or at home. I think the association comes from my first experience with a trackball being on my dad's 66MHz Compaq laptop back in the day. These days I've found the ability of the current Logitech MX Ergo trackball to be invaluable in my bedroom HT setup, as I need to control both the NUC and the laptop pretty much at the same time, and being able to switch between them at the touch of a button is godly. Before that, I had two separate but identical trackballs for them (the venerable M570) which was more than a little confusing.

I like be quiet!'s (geez that's a typing nightmare) coolers and PSUs, but find their cases a bit tacky. Not Thermaltake/Coolermaster/etc level tacky, but weirdly overdesigned. Went with a Noctua cooler this time entirely for price reasons, which is a criterion they normally lose to Scythe - a special meant I could get their 14cm version for what 12cm coolers normally sell for. They do sell black versions of their product these days, though you pay extra for the privilege. For me though, even if I had a case with a window, my home office layout means the window would sit uselessly against the inside of my desk, and I'd lose out on the sound dampening material on the regular side panel. Anyway, hopefully the next step isn't too hard, but I haven't started looking. Good RAM that doesn't have a uselessly tall heatsink.

My journey towards a new PC started yesterday with a couple of piecemeal purchases. A 2TB Crucial MX500 SATA SSD (from Amazon UK) and a Noctua U14S (from Newegg Taiwan) will be arriving in the following weeks. No rush on the build as such though - as I've said before, the schedule will probably be dictated by AMD's release calendar beyond this first wave of Zen 3 CPUs so it may well run into the new year. In the meantime I'll just ready the parts that aren't likely to age while I wait. I'll plug the SSD into my current system immediately of course, replacing one of the 250GB ones currently in there since I'm out of SATA ports and it's not worth buying a SATA expansion port for short-term usage. That means my SSD storage will consist of a 500GB SATA M.2 system drive, plus 1x2TB, 1x1TB and 2x250GB 2.5" disks. That's probably enough for a few years yet so I'll likely migrate all four of those SATA disks to the new system to live alongside a new NVME system drive. (I should probably go look up how many SATA ports current B550 boards typically have) Next purchases will probably be a case and PSU, but I'm a bit worried since I'm back working at the office now and without a car would have some difficulty lugging a case from the local post centre if I miss the initial delivery. Nonetheless the likely candidates are probably a Fractal Design Define 7 in white (because my current Define case is black) and a be quiet! Straight Power 11, if the current special I see on it is still current by the time I'm ready to order. Otherwise maybe the ol' reliable Corsair RM750X. Rest of the system is far more volatile of course but in terms of price guidance I'll probably look to the hypothetical 5600 or 5700X CPU depending on value, and whatever Navi model ends up competing pricewise between the 3060 and 3070. P.S. I believe the only two motherboards I've used which have ever died were both MSI. But to be fair to them, one was on my Pentium 3 600, and the other on an Athlon XP I built for my parents.

Finally made some time to get started after buying it on GOG via VPN for the equivalent of about $50AUD (~$37USD). Bit naughty I know but I've never paid the full $90AUD RRP for the regular edition of a game and I'm not about to start now. Besides, it'd be silly if I paid full price now and then also bought the CE on actual launch, which I'd be inclined to do if the game turns out good. Strong "if" though. I probably don't have anything particularly new to say that hasn't already been said in this thread. Performance on my 290X is spotty (and using Vulkan absolutely tanks the framerate), especially outdoors. Playing co-op only and there's a really annoying bug where the game constantly thinks the other player is engaged in dialogue, which is resolved by actually starting and ending another dialogue. All this is perfectly forgivable for an Early Access game of course, but are the biggest obstacles to enjoying the game as-is. I came into the game not knowing anything about 5E (or indeed 4E) but it doesn't seem all that complicated, but then as a rogue there's probably not much complexity to be had. Took a moment to figure out the spell memorisation later when I got control of the spellcasting NPCs. I'm also failing checks harder than XCOM, and I think in the final game I might look for a mod to just make all the checks static ones as per the Obsidian philosophy. Another thing carried from D:OS, particularly the first one, is that it's not particularly clear at all in which sequence you should tackle the content. It's very easy to just get funneled into the dungeon full of level 2 enemies while there's still a lot of level 1 content outside. Indeed it's fully possible to stumble into it without a full party if playing single-player, because while all the companions in this version are technically accessible almost immediately, you need a bit of luck or foreknowledge to get the right ones for your party balance before blundering into a challenging encounter. If you know where they are, only one is non-trivial (by being behind a big fight). In the end, my biggest concern for the game remains unchanged from what it was before I played this version. That the DnD licence would be a straitjacket on gameplay. The D:OS games may be somewhat divisive for pure roleplayers, but as co-op games they were unmatched, and I think the restrictions of DnD mechanics makes the emergent gameplay lose some of that magic. P.S. Get rid of the stupid lootable vases already, ugh.

Would have liked to see more than one model in the mainstream price range, but oh well. I'm not targeting any sort of performance benchmark, happy with grabbing the best value "decent" CPU in my price range which will probably be $300-500AUD. The 5600X will land at the top of that range so other, older options can't be ruled out. I don't know if that's rational, but my desire to build a new PC isn't rational in the first place, coming from a 6700K. I just can't be bothered dealing it anymore and want a fresh start. But that thing cost me about $500AUD and I have no intention on spending more than that on a CPU no matter how good it is (disregarding future decades worth of inflation of course).

"Axis Football" just makes me thing of Escape to Victory to be honest.

Was idly trying out some of the more recent additions to the NES and SNES Switch Online libraries. The best addition by far was Mario's Super Picross (or was that Super Mario's Picross?). Anyway, it's a hell of a gateway drug and being able to do the puzzles co-operatively is a blast. It's drop-in multiplayer at that, where the second player just needs to hit any input on their gamepad and it's automatically activated, no faffing about in menus required, which is a good thing because it's one of the games they didn't bother translating before dropping it onto the service. This is the opposite of Tales of Berseria, which I've also been trying lately, which has one of the more horrifically cumbersome multiplayer implementations I've ever seen. Every time you start up the game you have to manually assign the second gamepad to the second player, then manually assign a character to that player. Oh, and it's one of those games where the multiplayer only gets enabled when you formally get a companion NPC a few hours into the game, despite there being temporary companions earlier. I get that the multiplayer is basically just an afterthought, but still, it could be a hell of a lot friendlier to use. Oh well, not in love with the game anyway and just about to drop it in favour of BG3. The mood of the game is probably best described as being bi-polar, a lot of the NPCs are insufferable, and the combat is mostly button-mashing at this stage.

I thought there was something wrong with my computer with the update. Does look a little awkward, then I decided to just blow away the entire sidebar with uBlock and now with full width posts it looks tolerable.

If this was single player then I'd have huge reservations about it. But I'm desperate for more co-op RPGs (excluding ARPGs) so the question for me isn't whether to get it, but whether to risk going the full Brazilian to get this for about half the price. Hmm.

1.1.2 hotfix just released, looks like it resolves the issues that were stopping me from playing. Nice that they're willing to do these smaller fixes after having to wait so long for some key ones previously. And nice timing too as it's a long weekend here.

I think its predecessor, Crime and Punishment, is generally considered the better game. Might want to try that one first if you can get it cheap. It's been free on EGS before but it looks like the best current deal is "only" 75% off on GamersGate.

And now I'm waiting for the patch for the patch. Generally welcome changes - unsurprising when there are 998 documented changes - but they did manage to spectacularly break claim inheritance so that women don't inherit claims at all, and therefore completely breaking the concept of marrying for claims. Y'know, the actual proper historical way to get claims instead of gaming conveniences like fabrication. Plus they didn't fix the super frustrating levy replenishment bug.

Ian for trapping me in corners and spraying me in the back with an SMG. Iolo does this too with a triple crossbow but the game runs too fast to really notice it happening. Personality-wise it's gotta be Miranda and her (skimpy) plot armour.

No, just a lot of disk partitions. Easy to lose track of my files and folders when I have drives C through H, with most of them being simply transplanted from my previous PC.

I was clearing out some hard drive space and noticed I had a Star Citizen folder, dated 6 November 2013.

All I want from Star Citizen is a version of Privateer where I can actually aim without the slightest directional input causing the crosshairs to move an entire ship's width.

Briefly revisiting my childhood, back from before I knew who most of these people were. Mussolini is definitely good at making sure the trains run on time, while Lenin turned to communism after being disillusioned by the failure of his enterprise, owing more money than he has assets. The Bismarck simply sunk without a trace.

People do tend to settle near good sources of heat to help them survive winter.

My excuse is that I was here before the like system was implemented and therefore was robbed of my rightful internet points from 2004. However, this admittedly pales before metadigital's 1 like in 21635 posts, for a likeability rating of 0.0046% per post.

Nah, I'm happy with 16:9 as the primary gaming area and I suspect ultrawide screens (though I've never actually used one before) would just introduce more hassle as I don't think contemporary OSes can treat them the same way it would three separately addressable displays. I still want my games full-screen, with adaptive sync and all that, but without interfering with Windows desktop space either side. In the end, I just want somewhere to put my browser window (which I put on my right screen) and various other programs like file explorer windows, my music player, email client (on the left) and the natural breaks between separate screens is the most straightforward and intuitive solution to the problem.

I want a monitor set that opens up like a dartboard cabinet, with an ~30" screen in the middle and two more-or-less square displays inside the "door" panels. Running 3x27" right now but I really neither need nor want the screens on either side to be that wide as they're not used for displaying games (with rare exceptions). But matching not just the height but also the pixel density with various monitors of different sizes right now is nigh-impossible so I have to live with just having three identically sized ones.